Standing at the Summit
by SmashQueen
Summary: Her goal reached, Madeline takes a moment to reflect on how far she's come. Prompt fill.


Part of a collection of prompts that I decided to upload by itself.

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Accomplishment was as odd a feeling as it was foreign. She had aced tough tests before, made delicious pies and cakes, even received a letter saying she had been accepted into her chosen college in another province. Yet, they had all been so distant. Such small and insignificant things.

The wind played with Madeline's hair as it rushed past her. To be somewhere else so far away from everyone had been overwhelming. A year off she told herself. She told her family. She would take a breather and relax from the rush of senior year and be ready for college next fall. Perhaps by then, she thought, the exhaustion from her final exams would pass.

A year went by. Her exhaustion strangely remained. College admissions opened up again but...she just couldn't do it. The deadlines for grants, the confusing layout of the website's class lists, the sprawling campus, the moving expenses, all of the strangers she would be surrounded by, and the possibility of a crushing student loan she would never shake off if she didn't succeed came down upon her like a drizzling rain suddenly turned to thundering hail.

Madeline sat down on the snow-capped summit and pulled her legs up, wrapping her arms around them. She had always been good at putting up a good front. Whether she was tired or having a bad day, she always managed to put on a show of being better than she felt. When asked about the fall semester, however, she nearly shut down. She needed an out. Something to work on.

With college on the back burner, Madeline had gone job hunting. People went to college to get better jobs anyway. She could cut out the middleman and save herself some stress by finding one she could be happy with. She was a somewhat fresh high school student with a decent grade point average. How hard would it be to land one?

One month. Two months. Four. The college her teachers had pushed her towards was always on her mind, a path she could reach out to, but those hailstones froze her. Eight months and more. Another year passed and she was still useless. The thought of college became a tower she could not climb. She cooked and cleaned at home and walked all over to find a job opening, but nothing really helped her in the shadow of something she had turned her back on.

No matter where she went, the taunts of old bullies and disappointing stares of the neighbor never left her. She would never get into college, they said. She would never amount to anything, said the old man down the street.

Secretly, she believed them. And slowly, ever so slowly, the words bit into her and would whisper to her in the dead of night.

And suddenly, she woke up one day and didn't even recognize the bedraggled, pale redhead in the mirror. Where had the witty girl gone? Who was this other person? Who was Madeline for that matter? A girl with only a high school diploma and nothing else to show she had ever done anything of worth.

Soon, Madeline hadn't even known what was going on anymore. Her dreams were rags and her future was nonexistent.

Then, she had heard about Celeste. A dangerous, inspiring mountain that few attempted to climb. Those who did were seen as impressive. As...not useless.

So she went, for nothing else than to prove she could do _something _right.

Madeline shoved her hands into her jacket, glancing at the other part of herself floating above Celeste's summit. A little lighter. A little more carefree.

Madeline smiled. The swelling feeling of a job well done filled her as it never had in the past several years. Somewhere along the way she had forgotten what it felt like. It was her and her other half who had made it up the mountain. There had been no exams or deadlines or the judgmental stares of strangers. Just herself. All of herself. Because even if the girl in the mirror looked different, she was still Madeline.

And Madeline, who wasn't even a professional climber, had made it to the top of Celeste Mountain.

If she could do that, then who knew what else she could do?

For the moment, however, she relaxed with her other half, enjoying the view of the sunrise as the sky slowly began to turn.

The descent would come, but not for a while yet.


End file.
